


Lover, Are You Lonely?

by Meduseld



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types, The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Barry and Hal being trainwrecks, Bisexuality, Canon troubled pasts, Everybody is bi, Feelings all over everything, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Superpower Sex, There's probably less sex in this than you'd think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-21 16:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12461406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Barry has a problem. In his pants. Hal has a solution. Inhispants.(It’s what it sounds like. Mostly.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to V, my actual fax soulmate and beta.  
> You can see paleogymnast's art for this fic [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12619728)

The first time Barry has the idea is when he meets Clark.

Or more accurately, when he gets knocked into Clark while going Mach 7 and doesn’t hurt him. “Steady there” he says with a smile and Barry thinks _well, maybe_.

He never says anything, of course. He wouldn’t have had a clue where to start and Clark’s _Clark_ and he doesn’t know who would be more embarrassed. It’s likely they’d both die from acute blushing.

So that’s... _that_ but the idea keeps niggling at him. He’d almost managed to make peace with it, the fact that he was effectively celibate, but now there were...possibilities. People he could touch, be intimate with and not hurt them. Please them even.

After everything had happened, when he’d finally opened his eyes to find he’d lost nine months of his life and his body, now new and strong and different, he hadn’t thought about sex.

It had been daunting enough to do something as basic as walking without falling or shifting into supersonic speed, or figuring out how to go to sleep without waking up with his sheets on fire from friction. His elbows too bony and his calves always sore, a perpetual new puberty that made him wonder if maybe there was a God, and a vengeful one.

In all of it he’d forgotten, or maybe refused to think about, touching anybody.

And then there was Linda.

He’d tried. He really had.

The first time she thought maybe he’d just been too eager and a phone call interrupted before she could get anything worse than chapped lips, anyway. But he’d had to stop the second time because he could feel himself starting to vibrate and it had felt like a knife through his heart when she’d yelped.

He’d fallen off her and she’d laughed, holding out her arm. “You gave me an indian burn! Are we in middle school?” and Barry had had to break up with her because he couldn’t do it, couldn’t hurt someone that wanted so badly to be good to him.

Resigning himself to a lifetime of loneliness.

But then there was Clark, and Arthur, and Diana, not that he’d ever dare, and just. Options.

He’d almost forgotten how isolated he’d become, how removed from the human experience by the lighting that had made its home inside him until the League brought him back. All the things he’d missed, being able to be open and honest about who he was and what he could do.

The League means everything to him.

And that’s why he’s some combination of frustrated and ashamed and _needy_ that’s driving him insane.

He doesn’t want to jeopardize this with sex, it’s honestly the stupidest idea he’s ever had in a lifetime of them, but the thought just won’t leave him alone.

 

He’s walking off a superficial burn from a run in with Heatwave, not quite pacing under Doctor Mid-Nite’s watchful eyes when Dinah pops in with a smile. As beautiful as she is, she’s not that kind of metahuman and Barry smiles ruefully back. “Re-supply” she says, hefting up a crate of something stamped with Wayne Industries and Mid-Nite refuses to let Barry help bring it in.

Dinah takes pity on him and sticks around for some smalltalk while the good doctor hums happily and sorts behind them. Barry’s not entirely sure but he thinks it is something by Hootie And The Blowfish.

It’s nice though, companionable, and Dinah is one of the funniest people Barry’s ever met. Once he stops laughing at the Naked Man Orchid story, she sighs and stretches.

“Time to get Ollie back. I swear, he looks at Hal the way he looks at me sometimes” she says with a laugh. “Hal’s back?” She nods, tells him he got in unexpectedly about forty-five minutes ago and promptly stole her man.

“Good thing I know how to steal him back” she says with an exaggerated wink and just like that Barry’s hormones kick back into high gear and it’s so unfair because she’s just joking, trying to be friendly and Barry’s problem is...well... Barry’s got a problem.

He starts pacing again, easy mood evaporated, the clinking and shuffling sounds coming from Mid-Nite now grating, until the good doctor finally sighs after what feels like days and tells him to leave because clearly he’s about to do it anyway. “Page me if you have any trouble” he warns and Barry zooms away, full of excess energy and aimless irritation.

He hits the treadmill in the gym, one of the three specially calibrated for superspeed but it’s less than fifteen minutes before he can feel it starting to shiver, straining to keep up. He really, really can’t take another frowny faced bat-lecture on not destroying their equipment so he leaves and runs three laps around the satellite’s walkways before remembering that the bat-lectures on “ _no running in the halls Flash”_ are so much worse. And then just like that he’s standing in front of Hal’s door, fist already pounding on it.

He realizes too late that he’s probably asleep, but then the door slides open and Hal’s standing there with a lazy grin, looking artfully rumpled in an undershirt and boxers that don’t leave much to the imagination, a wide slice of his tanned, toned stomach visible.

“Hey Bear” he drawls, stepping aside.

Barry’s less than a foot inside when he says “Would you have sex with me?”.

Hal’s eyes narrow, going from sleep soft to focused, ring already flaring and Barry shakes his head.

“I’m not sex pollened, or concussed, or-or sleep deprived” he mumble-yells as the green beam rakes over him.

“Okay, how’s about you sit down?” Hal says, eyes flicking to the display being projected from his ring even as he maneuvers them both onto the couch.

“I’m serious” Barry says, grabbing his wrists and sheepishly letting go. Hal murmurs some assuring nonsense, looking Barry deep in the eyes and sighing at his scans.

“I’m really not altered, I’m just...would you?” he says, feeling stupid and hopeful and awkward.

Hal looks back at him.

“Well, the ring says you’re in the clear, but I wouldn’t say you’re not altered. What’s going on?” Barry stares at him, the words caught in his throat. All he can do is stare into those brown eyes, still a little dark from combat readiness, and hope to be understood.

Finally Hal sighs. “Yeah, I would. You’re a handsome guy, Bear. Is- are you having girl trouble?”

Barry groans, sinking into the standard issue League couch in Hal’s room. It’s more solid and uncomfortable than most, seen less use.

“Barry?” Hal says, falling into place next to him, one strong, long fingered hand settling,  carefully, onto his thigh. Barry _breaks_.

He tells Hal everything, in a jumbled streaming narrative that definitely makes him sound chemically imbalanced. He even, gaspingly, tell him about Linda, how _guilty_ he’d felt and how terribly lonely he is now.

Hal shushes him, runs him thumb along Barry’s face in a way that makes him realize he’s crying and that’s when he hears his own voice say “Will you have sex with me?”

Halfway through the question it dawns on him, what he’s done, the insult he’s unintentionally given.

Hal might be openly bisexual but that doesn’t mean anything.

He starts to stand, but Hal’s hand circles his wrist and pulls him back down. “Bear...That’s. Do you even like men? Because this is-” “Yes. I do. I have” Barry says and he’s not lying.

It’s just been a long time since he has, since Basic Chemistry, Dean Daphne and the lab’s supply closet his first semester of college.

Hal looks deep into his eyes, and then nods like he’s satisfied.

“Sure. Why not?”

Barry can feel his mouth drop open. “I-really? You’d…” “What’s a fuck between friends?” Hal says with a wide, shit-eating grin and then they both laugh.

They settle back on the couch, and Barry feels lighter than he has in months.

“Alright, let’s see what Ollie DVR’d for me” Hal says after a minute, reaching for the remote and Barry’s heart sinks.

“I-were you joking? Aren’t we going to…” Next to him Hal sighs and lunges at him, and Barry’s sped off to hit the wall behind him before he realizes Hal was just going in for a kiss.

“That would be why” Hal laughs. He adds “This is going to take a while”.

Barry can feel a hot rush of something, rage and embarrassment and longing and for a minute he’s not sure if he’s going to bolt or puke.

But there’s still a space next to Hal on the couch and someone needs to filter Oliver’s more reprehensible choices ( _Cutthroat Island VI: Reaper’s Revenge_? Really?) and in the end he sits back down and tries to relax.

After a while, when they’re halfway through the latest season of _Wendy the Werewolf Stalker_ Hal’s arm settles down around his shoulders. It’s such a high school move that it should be silly but he tenses anyway, and Hal pretends not to notice. Eventually Barry melts into it. Hal’s so warm, and he smells nice, hints of leather and sand. He’s right.

It’s going to take time and effort for Barry to remember how to do this. But he’d seen that the moment Barry had said it and his answer had been to put on a terrible television show and hold Barry close.

When they say goodnight they don’t kiss, but Barry feels lighter than he has in ages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for this story was born after watching Flash’s episode [The Nuclear Man (01x13)](http://www.tv.com/shows/the-flash-2014/the-nuclear-man-3063998/) and thinking that it was bullshit that Barry’s intimacy issues were never mentioned again.  
> The title is a line from [_Tell Me Baby_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDNcL1VP3rY) by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  
>  Mid-Nite is humming [_Hold My Hand_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoW3bqnr7tw) by Hootie And The Blowfish.  
>  Naked Man Orchids [really are a thing](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orchis-Italica-Naked-Orchid-Italian/dp/B00TE74TP2).  
> Dean Daphne’s name comes from [Daphne Dean](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Daphne_Dean_\(New_Earth\)), who really did date Barry Allen in the comics.  
> In the real world, _Cutthroat Island_ [was such a huge box office bomb that its credited with basically killing pirate-themed movies](http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/17303/looking-back-at-cutthroat-island), which didn’t recover until the first _Pirates of the Caribbean_ movie. So the fact that in this ‘verse it’s a big franchise this is both an joke and reference to Watchmen, where pirate themed stories [are hugely popular since superhero properties didn't catch on in a world with real superheroes](http://www.blather.net/projects/alan-moore-interview/watchmen-microcosms-details/).  
> [ _Wendy the Werewolf Stalker_](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Young_Justice_Vol_1_33) is a parody of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ that shows up in the Young Justice comics and is exactly the kind of show Hal would watch.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s almost a week before they’re alone together again.

Barry was practically vibrating in his seat on the Javelin while Aquaman shot him sideways glances and Batman pointedly ignored him.

They’d radioed the Watchtower that they were on the way in. Hal’s voice had cheerfully welcomed them and since then Barry couldn’t sit still. Between missions and everyone wanting to see Hal after his stint in space there’s been no way to get him alone.

But he can now, he can feel it.

Batman sighs a little as Barry rushes past him after they dock but he doesn’t care. Hal’s not at the radio array anymore and Barry rushes directly to his door, jabbing the chime this time, and jumping Hal as the door opens.

It’s terrible.

He’s clumsy and over eager and their teeth knock together. He pulls back in horror and Hal dissolves into cackles, and like everytime Barry’s heard him laugh it’s a shock to realize that the harsh braying is coming from him.  It makes him laugh too, remembering that they’re still the same people they were before he’d started this.

Hal takes his face carefully, thumbs stroking his cheekbones and softly presses their lips back together.

Barry sighs into it and it’s so _good_ that he’s speeding up before he knows it and Hal’s lips go from soft and warm to solid and cold as stone.

Just as it registers he hears something like the noise from a bug zapper and he’s ricocheting off of Hal, whose face is a glowing emerald mask.

Barry starts babbling a garbled apology but Hal waves him off. “The ring protects me, remember?” and it’s the entire reason Barry took a chance on this anyway.

“Sorry” he still says and Hal pulls him back in, a strong tan arm hooked around his waist.

“You’re overthinking it. Just...feel it, ok?” Barry swallows, shakes his head. He doesn’t know how or if he can.

He tries to remember the way it felt, the first time he kissed someone. Barry’d been a late bloomer, between the inherent nerdiness, the awful bone-snapping shock of his mother’s death and the long grey slog of his father’s trial and incarceration. He hadn’t kissed anyone until he was seventeen, already in college after keeping his head down and hitting the books to be left alone, added to his own natural inclination to do that anyway.

Her name had been Patricia Spivot, but everybody called her Patty. She’d been another too-young freshman and the kiss had been awkward and fumbling. But in the moment Barry had felt that he could stay there, kiss her, hold her, touch her, forever. It was like something had fallen into place and his normally over-charged brain quieted, soothed, and instead of thought he could only _feel_.

He tries to remember that, the feeling of his mind slipping into his body.

Hal drags his lips along Barry’s cheekbone, breath warm along Barry’s skin. By the time he moves down to his lips, the constant hum of his thoughts has cycled down and Barry tilts his neck to meet him.

He groans when Hal’s tongue slips past his lips, wet and hot and clever.

He’s probably terrible at it, having lost whatever modest skill he had but Hal doesn’t seem to mind, tongue moving in Barry like it has a mind of its own.

His hands are clenched in the fabric of Hal’s shirt, threadbare and probably from a discount Walmart three pack, so tight he’s scared it will tear. His arms are draped loosely around Barry, radiating heat, and just like that his synapses explode back to life.

Green light flares up inside his mouth less than a second later, protecting Hal’s teeth from his vibrating tongue and Barry backs up so fast he flings himself ass backward over the couch.

When the cackles die down he hears “That’s a new record, Baby Bear. Five whole minutes” and he manages to smile.

 

It gets easier. Barry finds it less challenging to quiet his mind now that he’s seen the ring really can act fast enough to keep Hal safe.

And Hal is incredibly good at doing things that make Barry’s brain shut up.

Like stroking his thumbs along the skin of Barry’s hipbones right before he slips his tongue in his mouth. Or rolling his hips just right to get Barry to keen.

Or softly pressing his lips on Barry’s face achingly close to his mouth until he can’t take it anymore and clumsily presses them together until he can get his tongue on Hal’s.

They really haven’t done anything but make out, Hal’s fingers skimming along the edges of Barry’s clothes and occasionally mapping out a few places underneath his shirts, but never quite rounding second base.

He feels balanced for the first time in months, something in him finally satisfied, which is of course when Hal gets hurt.

He’s not the only one, Arthur needs stitches and J’onn has a nasty chemical burn, but Barry’s breath stops when he hears Hal report his injuries over the comm as they’re cleaning up. It’s SOP, to sort them into those who can help and those who need help.

He doesn’t sound too badly injured, but Barry’s practically vibrating and Clark gives him a concerned look.

“I can handle this if you want to-” Barry doesn’t let him finish, tearing up a storm on his way to the makeshift medbay where Hal’s slumped against a metal pole, waving off Oliver’s concerned hands. “Just my ribs. Give me a second to recharge and the ring will take care of it” he says, trying to grin through the pain.

“Why _didn’t_ the ring take care of it?” Barry says and they both turn to him, half into a combat stance, and he realizes he’s practically yelling.

Hal sighs and winces, letting his breath out in a hiss.

“Low charge, Flash. Had to make the call, and this lug right here doesn’t have any powers” he says, punching Oliver’s arm.

Inside, Barry goes cold and empty, like someone’s pulled the plug on a bath drain. He’d sacrificed his shield for a friend. And Barry’s _angry_.

Like he has any right to feel that.

He’d picked Hal for this because of the ring, yes, but also because he could trust Hal not to bring feelings into it, not in a way that made a mess.

He’s disconcertingly serene, Hal, California beach bum ethos brought to life via Air Force discipline. He’s good at not getting attached, a quick glance at any of his quarters would tell you that.

But he’s still loyal and energetic and friendly and...Barry’s been a really terrible friend to him.

He tries to say something but all he manages is a garbled squawk and both Hal and Oliver turn to him with concern. “I have to go help Clark” he says, shame faced, and rushes back before they can respond.

There’s nothing for him to do when he gets back, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love the idea of drop dead gorgeous Hal having a laugh like [Janice from _Friends_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyuQrWu1F0), discussed in [more detail here](http://gethtastic.tumblr.com/post/91139467877/hal-is-one-of-those-people-that-is-sexy-247).  
>  Patty Spivot is also one of [Barry’s comic (and TV!) girlfriends](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Spivot).  
> By the way, if you need to imagine Hal’s SoCal accent? [This guy](http://disconymph.tumblr.com/post/153550039004).


	3. Chapter 3

He paces outside Hal’s door for fifty-two minutes, at a clip a bit too fast for ordinary eyes, before getting up the courage to knock.

When they’d been debriefing he and Batman had gotten into it, Batman chiding him for taking unnecessary risks while Hal answered “Oh, really, Mr. I-Got-Hit-By-A-Dock-Crane-Saving- _Superman_ -Last-Week? Don’t act like you wouldn’t have done the same thing”

“Your ring should have had more charge, what if you’d dropped out of the sky, Lantern? What then?”

“The ring’s no good if I don't use it. And diverting power from shield kept me flying. It’s the job, Bats. It is what it is”.

Barry had stared at his hands, avoiding the feeling of everybody’s judging stares, even though he knew they weren’t actually looking at him. Well. Clark might have been.

It’s that last thought, that Clark might catch him at this too that gets him to press the chime on Hal’s door.

He’s slow to answer the door, with a lazy wave of his newly charged ring from where he’s stretched out on the bed. “Not tonight dear, I have a bit of a headache” he says with a pained sort of grin.

It hits Barry like a knife in the chest.

“I have been unbelievably shitty to you” he says and Hal cocks his head. “Nah, Bear. You’re not _that_ bad at it and you’re getting better” and Barry is, hands down, the worst person ever.

“I’m not talking about making out, Hal. I- I should have been a better friend to you”. “Uh” Hal says. He seems lost and Barry just feels worse.

“My ribs aren’t too bad? There’s nothing you could have done-” “I don’t want you to think that I think of you as, as, a living sex toy or something. You’re my _friend_ ”.

Hal grins crookedly. “Y’know if you’d asked me at thirteen what I wanted to do for a living that would have been my answer”.  

Barry surprises himself by laughing. Hal’s grin dims a little, eyes a little sharper. There's something in his face Barry can't put a name to.

“They’re really not that bad, Bear, we can try to-” “No” Barry says, and that sick sort of feeling is back.

“Just. Let me get you take out, or something. That Szechuan place you love in Chengdu”. Barry zips off before he can answer.

When he gets back Hal’s more or less in the same position, the TV playing some sort of alien game show. He thinks it’s a game show, anyway. His smile is still warm, and cautious.

They eat in an easy silence, though, wordlessly trading containers and passing sauce packets while watching what Barry has come to realize is actually an adaptation of Jane Austen’s _Persuasion_.

“We’re cool, right?” Hal says, when Barry gets up to go. It’s the first time in months they’ve spent time alone without being all over each other. “Always” Barry says and Hal smiles, genuine. That night, Barry doesn’t get any sleep.

 

After that, Barry makes a concentrated effort to balance their friendship against what Hal’s taken to calling “sexual healing”.

It’s difficult sometimes, when Barry just wants to stick a hand down his pants, but he’s done using Hal.

There’s a roiling inside him when he thinks of it, the way Hal’s eyes had dimmed when he thought Barry was upset because he was too injured to be up for it.

That maybe Hal’s never said no to sex in his life, not really, not for his own sake, like he might not know that he can.

Or the nagging worry when he remembers the harsh intake of breath near his neck when his tongue had been dragging across Hal’s neck, revelling in the feeling of skin on skin because they’d finally progressed to making out half naked, when his thumb had slipped awkwardly along his skin.

Hal had pulled back, left arm pressed closed to his side, looking pale.

Barry had fallen over himself with apologies, zooming into the small kitchenette in Hal’s quarters to get an ice pack, stomach heavy with guilt.

“It’s okay” Hal had said, waving him off and sinking into the shoddy tower of shoved aside pillows on the bed.

“I should have let you get better” Barry said and Hal snorted. “It never healed right, don’t worry about it” he said, and rotated his arm out to show him.

High up, almost at the bend where his arm met his shoulder, tucked on the inside, ran a thin and uneven scar. It was pale and shaped like a crescent.

When Barry leaned in to look closer, he realized the lines were straighter than he thought. They seemed curved because they ran along a tiny divot, as if the flesh there had been excised.

His fingers reached out without a thought but Hal flinched away.

“Sorry. It closed up weird, the nerves got...screwy”. Barry nodded. “So, no touching?” “If you can, yeah, that’s best”.

He could see in his face that it wasn’t just the pain, or at least the physical one. Hal’s eyes had a hunted look, tongue running along his lip like he was begging Barry not to press it. He didn’t, and he didn’t let Hal jump into his arms to keep him from doing it either.

Instead, he’d excused himself to the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face and then stepped back out and convinced Hal to take him to a State Fair in Indiana.

The bitching about Midwest accents, and politeness, and weather had been worth it for the funnel cake and Hal’s eventually easy smiles. The Ferris Wheel hadn’t been bad, either.

The point is, Barry’s trying to be zen about the Oliver induced bar crawl.

He’s pretty sure no one has any inkling of what he and Hal have been up to behind closed doors. The only one who might be suspicious would be Clark, and if he had any doubts Batman would have kicked the door in to give them a lecture on fraternization by now.

As it is, Oliver’s just clingy and eager to goad Hal into increasingly strange variations of pool while Barry and Dinah hang back and shake their heads at them.

Before they’d left the Watchtower, Hal had pressed something that looked like a juice box into his palm. “Use responsibly” he’d said with a wink.

Barry’s enjoying the buzz from whatever it is, something thick that tastes vaguely metallic, laughing at Dinah’s customer service horror stories. It’s nice, being with them.

He never hung out much with anybody in high school, too dorky for the popular kids, too nerdy for the jocks and too strange for the geeks. Even when in college, where he’d managed something like a friendship with benefits with a couple of lab partners he never really had a group to belong to.

Maybe if he knew all it took was a lightning-and-chemical-bath induced set of superpowers he would have had his accident sooner.

It’s around the fourth bar, the one with music turned low enough he can’t actually feel it vibrating in his jaw bone that he realizes that he’s drunker than he bargained for. Happier too.

Hal and Oliver are waiting for a turn at the ancient, smoke stained pool tables while he sits near the bar at a spot Dinah commandeered.

“She just _would not_ believe that we didn’t sell geckos. Geckos. Like, what do you think a florist _is_?” she says and Barry laughs before he almost slips off his stool.

Dinah steadies him and takes the juice box out of his hands. “Aaand that’s enough Mr. Lightweight” she says and “Hey, I ju-ush-used to be able to to handle it! It’s jus’ been awhile…” he fumbles.

She runs a hand through his hair with a smile and calls for Hal to collect him. Barry rolls his neck in their direction and his eye catches on Oliver’s thumb, pressed low and firm against Hal’s lower back.

It skips along the surface of Barry’s mind like a stone. _Has_ he? Have _they_?

Oliver pulls a face when Hal moves towards him with a grin and Barry scowls. “Alright buddy, up and at ‘em” Hal says like he hasn’t noticed Barry’s mood and he hooks an arm around his waist to help him move.

“I said _responsibly_ ” Hal laughs in the alley they’ve slipped into so he can fly them back and just like that Barry is angrily shoving his tongue in Hal’s mouth because if he doesn’t he’s gonna say something he’ll regret.

Hal takes them up like that, tangled up in each other and surrounded by a green beam of light.

They only move slightly apart when they reach the Watchtower, stumbling down the hall frantically. It’s only when the door slides open that Barry realizes that they’re in his room, not Hal’s.

“We’ve never done it here before” he says, even though, technically speaking, they’ve never really done it at all. The closest they’ve gotten is a little dry humping, and one glorious instance of Hal’s hand on his bare cock, before Barry got too excited and they had to stop.

“We might not today” Hal says, squinting at Barry’s face. They haven’t really turned the lights on, whispering at each other in the dark. “Just how plastered are you right now?” “Uh. Not at all?” he says and before Hal can argue he shakes himself like a wet dog, albeit one capable of Mach speed.

He can almost feel his body burning through the- whatever it was he drank- the way he can feel it eat up the humongous plates of tacos he has with Cisco whenever he can.

When he stops Hal has a fond little smile on his face that makes him feel dizzy all over again. “Ring says you’re clear” he says, and knocks Barry on the couch.

He’s straining for a kiss but Hal moves down the length of his body with wicked grin. He pulls down his zipper with his teeth and Barry loses all words when he mouths the cotton of his briefs.

He’s embarrassing himself with the needy little noises he’s making glad that the darkness hides his blush, but Hal seems to love it, dragging his underwear off and kissing the head of his cock.

He practically screams at that but chokes on it when Hal’s mouth closes down hot and wet on what feels like his entire body.

He doesn’t last long, fear and pleasure racing through his veins while he’s calling Hal’s name like a prayer as he moves up and down his length with what feels like two tongues it’s so good.

It’s only when he comes that he realizes they didn’t use a condom, and that they’ve skirted a pretty large conversation.

“It’s okay” Hal whispers like he’s said it outloud. “I’d call you an idiot if it were anybody else but I got my little buddy watching out for me” he says with a wiggle of the ring on his finger.

Barry’s surprised he didn’t take it off.

He starts to say something, to yell or apologize maybe, and instead his mouth closes on Hal’s neck. He fumbles a hand down his pants like a clumsy teenage boy to find Hal is hot and hard and aching.

It’s probably, objectively, terrible but he moans like Barry’s doing something right.

There’s a small part of him that’s still terrified he’s accidentally going to rip Hal’s cock off before he’s even really seen it and it floods with relief when Hal spurts along his arm.

“Damn, Bear” he laughs and Barry laughs with him. “I knew you just needed to unwind a little” he says and Barry hears his own voice say “Next time I get to do that to you”.

“I’ll hold you to that” Hal says as he stands and stretches like a cat. He yawns out a goodnight and walks out, ruffling Barry’s hair as he goes.

Barry stays on his couch, awkwardly sprawled with his junk out, and he can't decide how to feel about it for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chengdu is the capital of China's Szechuan province and the home of one of the sub-styles of Szechuan cuisine to the point that [UNESCO declared it a city of gastronomy to recognise the sophistication of its food](http://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/chengdu). Barry’s not skimping here, is my point.  
> I choose to believe Jane Austen’s works are so universal they’ve literally gone galactic. _Persuasion_ ties with _Pride & Prejudice_ for my favorite amongst her books.  
> I do have backstory for Hal’s scar. It’s awful.  
> The reason Barry's alien booze is in a juice box [is this](https://9gag.com/gag/a9LKjrW/you-can-buy-vodka-packaged-in-a-juice-box-in-romania).  
> In the comics, Dinah had a flower shop [called Sherwood Florist](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Sherwood_Florist). How great is that?


	4. Chapter 4

There’s a part of Barry that’s surprised. 

Things have kept moving along and even though he’s still braced for some sort of tragedy it hasn’t happened. 

He repaid had the favor, while fully sober, back in Hal’s quarters. When he’d slipped Hal’s pants and underwear the whole way off he’d been staring, eager to drink him in now that the lights were all the way on. His mouth had gone dry and then soaked at the stark tan lines, Hal teasing him about whether or not he liked it, the way his skin went sharply from gold to pale. The contrast was both lurid and captivating, enough to make Barry runs his tongue along his hip bones, reveling in Hal’s moans and the changes under his lips. And then he’d worked his way down to the root of his cock, red and curved and circumcised. 

Afterward they headed out for Mexican food in actual Mexico and Hal spent the entire meal playing footsie with him under the table. He’d taken his turn again when they’d gotten back. 

Two days after that, they spent three hours just lying naked together, Hal’s hands running all over him until he was so relaxed he barely felt the burn when Hal’s wet fingers dipped inside of him and stretched him open until he came all over Hal’s stomach with a moan. 

Barry’s life has settled into something close to a routine: get up, go to work, save the world and find time to both hang out with friends of the super and not super varieties while still getting naked with Hal whenever he can. 

It’s after coffee with Iris, cut short by a Black Manta attack on Maine he helps stop and a nice round of twisting on top of Hal’s standard issue sheets until he calls for a break because Barry doesn’t seem to actually have a refractory period when it hits him. 

As Hal gets up, his back achingly perfect, tan and muscled and the words just leave his mouth. “You know I just realized- Hal turns to him, face already half closed off-I don’t really know much about you”. Hal seems to relax a little at that. “Like, where you’re from, or-”

“The States, Barry” he says with a smile.

“No, I mean-”

“California”

“Knew that too, just-”

“Barstow”

“Barstow? You don’t seem like you’re from Barstow”

“I don’t know what that means” 

“I just. It’s...I’m sorry”. It strange that as long as they’ve known each other he knows a handful of personal facts about Hal. He’s not entirely sure about his family, or his history, or much of anything beyond his shitty taste in movies, the taste of his come, the fact that he’ll drink any beer you put in front of him and that every battle they’ve been in proves that he can trust Hal to watch his back. 

Hal sighs. “No, you’re right,  _ I’m _ sorry. It’s a bad habit”.

“A  _ habit _ ?”

“Yes, just, y’know, like... _ aaaa _ nd I’m doing it again. It’s from the Air Force. They pound it into you, not giving away anything, ‘loose lips sink ships’, ‘observe everything admire nothing’, ‘b e polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill everybody you meet’. That sort of bullshit, you know?” 

Barry doesn’t, not really, but he can see the point. Military drilling is hard to break, a quick glance at the eerie orderliness of any of Hal’s living spaces is proof of that. He hides it well but he’s still sticking to the comfort of the routine. 

Hal sighs “The truth being, it’s kind of worked out for me so far”. To an extent, maybe. Barry doesn’t want to argue the point.

“And now you sound like Batman”

“Barry. There’s no need to insult me” He smiles, but only for a second. He says the next words like they hurt, but he’s powering through it. Like he owes it to Barry, says a guilty twist in his gut.

“It’s different, in a war zone. You do what you have to to get through it. And then you come home and people ask stupid questions, y’know, stupid shit like...did you kill anybody over there or did you get any  _ medals  _ and it’s just. Easier. To not answer but sound like you are”. He trails off, eyes distant.

The worst part is Barry knows exactly what he means. 

The people who would ask him about killing someone would probably be strangers on the street but the medals? That would be his family thinking that it was a normal question, not understanding why it would be so terrible. 

Barry might never have had to deal with the first question, but, like everyone else in the League, he’d come close enough to the second. 

Anybody who put their life on the line understood that the medal wasn’t an award, something to be congratulated, but recognition. Something like a purple heart or a POW medal said ‘we see you. we see the sacrifice you made and we honor it’. It was about the acknowledgement more than anything else. 

He starts to say something and stops. He licks his lips instead.

Beside him Hal sits down and shifts onto the bed, left arm rotated unconsciously to hide the underside again, the other reaching out to trail his fingers down Barry’s chest. 

It moves down between his legs and squeezes. 

“Ready to go again?” he sounds like he's trying for teasing and he almost reaches the mark. “Feels like you are”. 

Barry quietly removes Hal’s hand. 

“Please don’t do that”

“Do what?”

“Use sex to distract me. I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it just say you don’t want to talk about it. You don’t need to  _ do _ anything”.

When Hal finally turns to look at him, his eyes are a combination of shocked and something oddly relieved.

It was possible, Barry suddenly registered, that he hadn’t even realized that he’d done it.

Eventually, Hal leans back with a ghost of his usual grin on his face, and says, trying for humor, “You know you’re going to be the death of me, don’t you”. 

They don’t talk about it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s long since been my personal headcanon that while Hal’s home base is Coast City, he’s from Barstow largely due to the fact that _Emerald Dawn_ is set in a desert town, deserts are better for plane testing and Hal’s often shown working in the desert. I picked that city in particular because of [the opening lines of _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2pgWsYSyUA).  
>  "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet" is a [quote from retired US general James Mattis](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Mattis), who was actually a Marine, but I couldn't not use it.  
> In canon, Hal really did receive a POW medal [in Green Lantern (vol. 4) #10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jillian_Pearlman#cite_note-GL10-4). And, let’s be real, it’s more likely than not that he has [a Purple Heart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Heart).


	5. Chapter 5

Barry’s carefully licking sweat and other fluids from Hal’s chest, running his thumb along a scar that traces the line of his abdomen that he doesn’t mind Barry touching, enjoying the way he shivers when he warbles something like “damn you’ve gotten good at that”. 

Barry freezes because he’s right. 

He hasn’t worried about maybe hurting Hal, or anybody else for that matter, for days, weeks, months on end. Not since Hal had pushed inside and made him new. 

It made him blush to think about.

 

They’d spent weeks leading up it. First Hal’s fingers, slowly working his way to more and more each time, then his tongue one memorable Thursday that had made Barry a moaning, useless mess sprawled on his sheets. 

He’d seen the shift in his eyes, the day they decided to try it for real. Remembers the soft lips and scrape of stubble when he’d kissed the corner of Barry’s mouth like he’d been stealing.

Hal had been so careful, so gentle, spending hours on end stretching him until he felt Barry was ready. 

He’d felt both exposed and ecstatic to be pinned by the absolute focus in those dark brown eyes, like he was something hallowed, deserving of nothing but his undivided attention. His worship, he almost dared to think. 

Even then he’d felt something coiled tight behind his ribs. 

No matter how much they’d already done, how many times he’d run his teeth and nails and tongue along Hal’s skin, felt him do the same, Barry was still so afraid. 

His muscles felt like water rushing along his bones when Hal finally, finally, lined up inside him. It hadn’t hurt. 

It had been ecstasy, the slow burn of the slide, punctuated by Hal’s puff of breath against his neck. 

Inside what felt like his heart, something gave way. 

The fear was gone. 

His body knew what to do. 

Hal’s fingers had slipped into his, the ring fitting against them like a promise, and they’d moved in the oldest rhythm known to the world.

It seemed ridiculous now, looking back. Time with Hal was always fun, and extremely pleasing, but now it was  _ easy _ . 

No more tension or second guessing himself. He could just be in the moment, lost to the feeling of Hal’s mouth along his neck, hands scrabbling at his shoulder or his thighs clamped around him as he rode Barry like there was no tomorrow. Hal had trusted him to do that, teaching him how he liked to be opened up, how much he liked to be on top, rolling his hips down while Barry's hands spasmed helplessly on his skin. 

He'd licked into Barry's mouth softly, quietly satisfied, after the first time. He'd been less nervous but still skittish, comforted by Hal's solid weight. It had been like going into freefall. He'd loved it. 

Just like loved Hal's teeth at the junction of his shoulder, or running his fingers through his hair, or all the perfect ways in which their bodies fit together.

Or laughing at the fact that Hal literally never took the ring off, not to shower, sleep or slip his tongue between Barry’s lips.

He didn't want to ask, or know, why he couldn't feel it when Hal's fingers were buried deep inside him.

The fact that they could just hang out, after, or before, going for ice cream or to movies makes all of that all the more precious.

If this was Hal’s way of ending things, of pointing out that Barry didn’t need any more moments like that, he’d always have those memories.

 

“Barry?” he asks again, with a little tug at his hair, and Barry realizes he’s still braced midlick over his tanned chest, tongue out like an idiot. 

“Uh. Yeah, I don’t know...I guess?” Hal laughs, the snorting cackle as unattractive as ever, jolting him fully into the moment. “So...that’s that?” 

By his mental clock, they’ve been doing this for more time than he’d ever bargained for. It’s gone on longer than the longest relationship he’s ever had, and he’s pretty sure that means it’s lasted  _ much  _ longer than any of Hal’s. Unless you string together all the times he and Carol tried to make it work. 

“If by that you mean that am I gonna give your Boy Scout Badge for orgasms, the answer’s hell yes. Anything else is up to you.”

“Uh, really? You mean that?”

“This was my way of giving you an out, here, but I’m not good with the talky talky after my brains have been fucked out of my skull”

Barry laughs. It’s a lot funnier now, after he’s discovered that Hal’s holds not one but two Ph.D.s. Then what Hal’s saying really hits him. 

He thinks that when all this started he probably would have jumped at the chance the gracefully back out after getting what he needed. It’s not what he wants now. 

“So if I said I’d like to, uh…”

“Continue enjoying both my friendship and my benefits?” Hal says with an exaggerated eyebrow waggle. 

“Yeah I’m not super comfortable with that phrasing” he says, because it twists, low and ugly, in his gut.

“Aw, Care Bear, it’s ok if you don’t want to do the friendship part” Hal says, deliberately light, and Barry throws a pillow at him and sparks a small melee. They’re both out of breath and grinning by the end of it. 

“Friendship. With or without benefits, or nothing at all”

He means that. He thinks he could live without ever having sex with Hal again. He doesn’t think he’d make it without him at all. Just the thought makes him go cold. 

“You drive a hard bargain, but deal” Hal says, stretching out like a tanned, toned, cat. Underneath, Barry can sense real relief, something almost imperceptible about him untensing. 

After a minute he makes a thoughtful noise. 

When he meets Barry’s eyes, his pupils are already dilating, black overtaking brown. He feels his whole body shiver. He’s come to learn, intimately, just what that look  _ means. _

“Y’know the whole vibrating thing? Could be…interesting”. 

Barry swallows hard.

“No take backs”

“Wouldn’t dare”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Just saying](https://nebezial.deviantart.com/art/dude-talk-419516503).  
>  But on a more serious note, I’m about to get way too real about justifying a throwaway line because by now you know how I do: Hal _could_ totally have two Ph.D.s. Starting off with the fact that [he went to the Air Force Academy](http://clashofthefinest.proboards.com/thread/130/hal-jordan), which already requires incredible intelligence and hard work, the Air Force would help him get further degrees because it helps them. Second, though many require a Master’s degree, [students can sometimes progress directly to a PhD after their undergraduate degree especially in the sciences ](https://www.findaphd.com/advice/finding/phd-faqs.aspx)and Hal would definitely study math or engineering. Add into that the fact that in Green Lantern: Earth One he’s [“a smart, capable person with a space and science background”](http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/07/12/green-lantern-earth-one-makes-a-drastic-change-to-hal-jordans-tale-exclusive) and the fact that [on Earth-9602 he’s merged with Tony Stark](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Harold_Stark_\(Earth-9602\)#) and you get: Hal is one smart cookie. Of course he’s still a trainwreck person who can’t adult but genius doesn’t preclude you from being a dumbass. ~~(He would also have had time to study in prison but don’t get me started on that)~~   
>  Finally, catch that [_A Softer World_ reference](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=591).


	6. Chapter 6

From the viewing platform on the Watchtower there’s a spectacular view. And right now it’s even better. 

The black is crisscrossed by streaking lights, faster than the human eye can properly follow. On Earth they must think it’s a meteor shower. 

Barry’s the only one still watching, entranced. Almost everybody else had lost interest three minutes into it, when they realized they couldn't tell what was going on. 

Barry can, his eyes vibrating to follow them in a way that Plastic Man immediately dubbed “creepy, dude”, before telling him he’d have to settle the bet on the winner. 

Batman had huffed, “It’s a training exercise for air support, designed to-” “It’s a game of tag, Bats and I have 20 bucks on Wonder Woman” Barry had heard him laugh as what was visible of Batman’s face soured. The cowl is oddly expressive. 

Ever since then Barry’s been staring enthralled at all of them. There’s Hal’s surprising grace as he avoids Clark’s more straightforward flying, Shayera’s use of her mace as a counterweight, Diana’s evident joy. 

He’s never given it much thought, trusting them fly up and to have his back as he runs, but they’re beautiful. They probably don’t look like this in combat, showing off, looping and twirling and chasing each other, and Barry’s the only one that can actually see it. 

He might, also be idly toying with a fantasy involving a no doubt now-sweaty Hal in the Watchtower showers afterward. There’s no way they could get away with it, but it’s a nice thought, trailing the water’s path down Hal’s muscled, soapy thighs. 

He gets a special thrill out of tracing the lines left by the sun and his scars. Barry would never admit it out loud but he’s a little jealous of that. The lightning strike that gave him his powers wiped everything away, leaving him blank and impossible to mark. 

It had even taken the caterpillar shaped scar by his right kneecap, the one he’d had since he was six years old and had slipped onto a rock while running around in the yard. It’s weird to miss it. 

“How are they doing?” rumbles a low bass in his ear and he jumps. 

When he catches his breath he could swear Batman’s smiling. “Uh- I- what. What should I be looking for?”

“Honestly? Between us?” he says leaning in in a way that makes Barry want to jump back because those reflective lenses are  _ spooky _ , “Who’s winning?”

Barry barks out a laugh that quickly dies. Maybe he wasn’t joking. “Um, I’m not sure who’s winning, exactly, but Clark’s been ‘it’ more often? But think he kinda likes that, he’s not exactly, well you know he's…” he trails off, realizing that maybe he’s just sold him out. 

“He is, at that” Batman says with a nod, looking at the stars like he can make them give up their secrets by force of will alone.

He still makes Barry nervous. 

He’s not alone in that, but still. Barry doesn’t know his real name, or anything about him, beyond the fact that he hold the line in  _ Gotham _ , which is the only place that has made Barry think that there might really be such a thing as eldritch evils lurking beneath the surface of their world. The thought makes his skin itch.

But sometimes he has flashes of humanity and honestly, that makes it worse. Batman the myth is easier to deal with than Batman the actual man. 

He’s pretty sure Clark knows who he is, under the cowl, and sometimes he has the nagging suspicion that  _ Oliver  _ might know but mostly he’s content to leave the question unanswered. 

Clark pinballs off of Hal, knocking him off course, after a well placed hit by Shayera and Barry winces. “What?” Batman says next to him. 

After a while, the running commentary comes easily, almost like he’s talking to himself, which little hums and interjections from Batman, things like “he’s favoring his left, isn’t he?” and “She’s too reliant on that”.

It takes him a minute to register that he’s talking to Barry when he says “You should be more careful”.

“What? I’m- I’m not one of the ones up there” he says, taking a minute to even realize what he might be referring to. His mind jumps away from the thought like it's been burned and Barry turns away knowing he’s blushing. Batman just sighs. 

He practically melts with relief when he calls time, after a stony silence, and the all the flyers drop back in whooping and laughing. Barry tries not to flinch away from Hal’s arm around, because it’s exactly what he would have done months before. He doesn’t quite manage but he’s overshadowed by Plastic Man's exuberant return, everyone wincing as he bends his mouth into a megaphone, feedback and all, calling for a winner. 

It’s Shayera.

She celebrates by picking Barry up, bridal style, and demanding a round of drinks. He speeds to the nearest mini fridge to get her a Dr. Pepper, grateful for the cool air and the chance to get away. 

When he gets back, Batman’s gone. 

Later that night, he flops onto his bedspread, exhausted. Shower sex, as it turns out, wasn’t as fun as he’d thought. He’d taken an elbow to the ribs when they’d been trying to maneuver around each other in the tiny cubicle in his quarters. Hal had laughed, then yelped when Barry stepped on his foot and set them both sliding. They’d slammed into the wall and called a truce. 

Behind him, Hal steps out of the bathroom with a grin, towelling at his hair. He’s tan all over, except the stark lines that outline his groin and perfect ass and the spidery lines of his scars. It always makes Barry want to lick.

Maybe it shows on his face, what he’s thinking, because Hal wraps up the towel and whips at his stomach. “Hey!” flinches and scowls. Hal grins. “Aw, Baby Bear. Let’s turn that frown upside down” he drawls and reaches for him. 

Still pout- no,  _ scowling _ , Barry wriggles away. “C’mon. Please let me kiss it better?” he says, glancing at Barry under his lashes and honestly, he should look ridiculous. He doesn’t. 

Barry sighs, and stills. Hal kisses it better. Then he moves his lips and his tongue further down and Barry moans. He’s so very, very good at that, licking hot and wet at his balls and behind. He takes his time pulling Barry open, until he’s so relaxed he feels empty.

Even then he makes Barry beg for what feels like hours before finally, finally, slipping inside. Barry screams. 

His body arches like a bow and his legs draw around Hal, pulling him in tight. He huffs out a breath and goes still, waiting to see what Barry’s planning. 

He waits until his heart stills and he can feel, in exquisite detail, just how deep Hal’s buried himself. Then he tilts his head, skin sliding together sticky and warm, until he can look him in the eye. 

It’s only when he focuses completely, pupil so dilated his brown eyes gone black, on Barry that he makes his body vibrate. 

The look on his face, awe, pleasure, irritation, joy and surprise as he comes, helpless, is something he’ll treasure. 

It’s only afterward, Hal slipping quietly out of the room with a just a hint of a limp, that he realizes he didn’t mention Batman. And that they’ve never, in a literal sense, slept together. 

When he meets Hal in the mess the next day, he means to talk about it. 

Instead he asks Hal about the glowing string of numbers he’s poring over, which leads to a discussion about subspace hyperdrives, which gets Shayera to come over, which leads to John coming over, which leads to Oliver coming over, which eventually leads to Dinah breaking up an argument. 

By the time they’re done, Barry can’t remember what it was he meant to say. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t listen to Batman, they are definitely playing tag.   
> Oliver does in fact know Batman’s identity because as the scions of the rich elite, they grew up together, more or less. That idea is present in [_Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham_](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Batman:_The_Doom_That_Came_to_Gotham_Vol_1) which was on my mind and the reason why I couldn't resist using the word "eldritch".


	7. Chapter 7

Hal looks absolutely beautiful in the desert sun. 

He’s leaning back in a cracked vinyl booth, head tilted back, the skin of his throat tan and inviting. 

He’d looked beautiful earlier too grasping helplessly at his sheets, back arched, every part of him taut, his cock red and leaking against his stomach. 

Barry had had two fingers inside him, vibrating, and Hal couldn’t even scream. The noises coming from him had been soft, punched out, head thrashing. 

He’d been so proud. It had taken him weeks of practice to be able to get it right, the speed and the duration and all those little wonders of control. 

Barry had wanted to say something like  _ you’re beautiful _ or  _ that’s right, take it, I’ll give you exactly what you want.  _

He hadn’t. 

Instead he’d come for what felt like the hundredth time, but was probably closer to the thirteenth, and jerked his hand away so fast human eyes couldn’t follow it. 

He clamped his wet fingers around the base of Hal’s cock and replaced inside of Hal with his tongue. 

It took a moment for Hal’s perception to catch up to his movements, stilling him a little. 

And then Barry made his tongue vibrate too and Hal really did scream. 

He couldn’t keep going as long as he would have liked, it was less intuitive than making other parts of himself move the way he wanted, so as a compromise he loosened his grip and pressed his tongue to the base of Hal’s cock. 

He closed his eyes and enjoyed the way Hal’s entire body shuddered as he came. 

Then he pressed little closed mouth kisses all the way up to Hal’s chest until he half heartedly shoved him off, over stimulated. 

“Fuuuuuck” he whispered, accent so purely SoCal it was almost hilarious. 

“Don’t laugh” he said, pointing a finger vaguely in Barry’s direction while catching his breath. 

It had quickly become on of his favorite things. 

Watching Hal’s chest heave, skin glowing, muscles relaxing as he settled into a post-orgasmic haze. Or maybe he just liked getting him there. 

After a while Hal pulled himself up, stretching, even more striking than a Mapplethorpe. He smiled at Barry over his shoulder, brown hair glowing close to gold in the light, and he actually felt his heart skip a beat. 

“Wipe that shit eating grin off your face” Hal said with a swat at Barry’s thigh before ambling off to the bathroom. 

He sits up when he hears the water turn on, Hal doesn’t close the door and he doesn’t think he can resist the show, but before he can leave Hal’s voice calls out “I’m buying you lunch at Camilla’s”. 

“Really?” he says, hating how surprised he sounds.

“Barry. After something like that you’re  _ definitely _ worth spending a meal on” 

“And if I did that for a whole night?”

Hal’s head pops out of the doorframe. The looks on his face makes Barry’s knees give out. “How’s about we find out tonight?”

 

That’s how they end up at Camilla’s at nearly 5:00 pm on a Wednesday. 

There’s nobody else there, except one grizzled trucker at the counter, occasionally looking up from her coffee cup to offer a smile missing teeth at the waitress. 

It’s not quite on State Route 111 curving away from the way to Salton Sea. He thinks they’re probably closer to Arizona. 

Barry has the feeling it’s seen better days, and he can think of better places to eat, but the line of Hal’s shoulders is never more relaxed. He knows all the waitresses by name, even though they don’t seem to know him, and he always sits by the window, staring at the distance beyond the curve of the guardrail along the road. 

Sometime after the awkward talk they’d had, no not that one or that one, the one about the scar Hal refuses to talk about, he’d brought Barry to Camilla’s. 

He claims it has the best licorice cake in three states, and as far as Barry can tell it’s absolutely true. 

It joins his incomplete collections of barebone facts about Hal: his favorite dessert is licorice cake, the only kind of pie he’ll eat is cherry, he takes his coffee as black and hot as possible, he refuses to drink any sort of soda, he’s not a vegetarian but his favorite burgers are the veggie ones from a hole in the wall on the road to Rincon, near Santa Barbara, he can’t actually get diary in space so he eats as much as he can while planetside, he’s Jewish but he doesn’t keep kosher, he actually read all of _War and Peace_  on a dare while stationed in Korea, he loves Indiana Jones but hates Star Wars and is cagey as to the reasons why. 

He’s seen _Grease_ fifty-two times, because it was a popular movie to play to airmen far from home, with no politics or bloodshed and there was a shipping error anyway so it was the only movie on base that was, in his words, ‘somewhere snowy’. 

That and mental map of the constellation of scars on his skin, burns and cuts and abrasions, places where broken bones poked through. He doesn’t mind touching or asking, though he never answers, except when it comes to the one they pretend doesn’t exist.

“What?” he says when he catches Barry staring and he can feel himself blushing. 

He shakes his head at his noodle casserole. He’s only about 60% sure it actually has noodles in it, but it’s good, all grease and comfort. 

He can feel Hal smiling at him over the rim of his coffee cup. 

From the curve of his lips he’s going to say something teasing, that’ll leave Barry squirming in his seat, tugging that the skin that’s stuck to the hot vinyl. 

Before he can, his phone beeps somewhere in the depths of his leather bomber jacket, because he’s committed to the aesthetic even in the desert heat. 

Hal’s face changes completely. 

It goes from Barry’s open, laughing friend, to serious, scowling Captain Jordan. 

He takes out the phone and while whatever he sees on screen doesn’t quite relax him, he stops looking like he’s going to storm out the door, ring flashing. 

“Just my brother” he says, trying for a smile. 

Hal has an indeterminate amount of brothers, he’s referenced them in plural a few times but never uses names. He mostly just says ‘my brother this’ or ‘my brother that’ so Barry doesn’t have a clear picture for any of them or how many of them there may be, or if maybe he’s talking about brothers in arms, instead. 

“Probably just jealous I didn’t bring him here, instead” he says, trying for levity. Barry tries to play along. 

“You’ve brought him here?”

“Yeah a couple times- he says with a shrug- Ollie too”.

Something sharp and ugly bites the inside of Barry’s stomach. Something that's been lurking there for a lot longer than he'd like to admit.

He can’t stop the words that jump out his mouth, sharp and covered in acid. “What  _ about  _ Ollie? Have you two-”

Something in Hal’s face shifts, so minute he wouldn’t have noticed it before he’d spent months poring over it, and Barry feels his lunch tickling the back of his throat. 

“You  _ have  _ haven’t you?” to his own eyes he sounds bizarrely calm.

“Barry. Don’t.” Hal says, sounding like he’s facing down Black Hand. “This isn’t what-”

“Hal! Wha- what about Dinah?!” 

“Barry- Hal says, voice soft and deceptively kind. His eyes have gone dark, like brackish water- c’mon”.

“Her too” he hears someone whisper. 

It has to be true, it has to be him who said it. His thoughts bend around it like a funhouse mirror. In front of him Hal looks like he’s stoically enduring a gut wound, the edges of his jaw gone pale. 

“Who else?”

It could be all of them, it could be none of them, but maybe Barry’s been running around like an idiot, everyone else pretending they don’t know, like he’s some seven year old rambling about Santa to indulging adults. 

“Don’t” Hal says and it really does sound like a battlefield command this time. “We’re not having this conversation. That’s not what this is, and you knew that from the start. I don’t owe that, I didn’t promise you anything”. 

He right about that. 

He’d even insisted on condoms after that first time, because it was smart, because it was right and he hadn’t said it in so many words, but because it wasn’t exclusive either, even if they were both clean and likely to stay that way regardless.

Barry hadn’t let himself think about that, not really, not wanting to dwell. It was one thing to imagine and dismiss nameless baroom strangers. These are his coworkers, his friends. He chokes it down, the taste of it bitter and thick.

Barry bites his lip, hard enough to make it bleed, and Hal looks away. Then he stands up and leaves money, enough for a tip, on the table. “I’ll catch you later” he says, and leaves without looking back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robert Mapplethorpe was known for his black and white and often deeply sexual photographs. In particular, [ I was thinking of this one](https://www.artnet.com/auctions/artists/robert-mapplethorpe/daniel-from-z-portfolio).  
> Camilla’s is yet another of my _American Vampire_ homages, in particular [ Skinner Sweet’s love for licorice cake and out of the way diners](http://fangfiction.blogspot.com.co/2012/10/scott-snyder-american-vampire-graphic.html). I thought naming it [Carmilla’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmilla) was a little too on the nose as another vampire reference so I got rid of the r.  
>  The [Salton Sea and State Route 111](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_111) are real things and you could make a rough guess of where they are, geographically, with that information.  
> I have reasons for pretty much all those Hal facts, but to keep it brief: [Rincon is a great surf spot](http://www.travelgrom.com/surf-spots/santa-barbara/rincon), comics canon [makes Hal Jewish](http://ivanberk.tumblr.com/post/65456143314) (usually only [via his mother](http://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/a-jewish-mother-for-a-galactic-cop) but as far as I’m concerned he’s Jewish going back several generations on both sides and have oodles of headcanons on that if you wanna hit me up), the USAF has [two bases in South Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_In_South_Korea) and it’s also shoutout to Hal’s [service in the Korean War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League:_The_New_Frontier) in _The New Frontier_ , [this is why Hal hates Star Wars](http://gethtastic.tumblr.com/post/87989891377/this-isnt-a-prompt-unless-you-want-it-to-be), I can’t explain why I thought _Grease_ would be the funniest movie to put there but Hal was [stationed in Greenland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Air_Base).  
>  Comics canon is as ever screwy with family details, but I usually use the canon that states that Hal [has one older brother and one younger brother](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Jordan_Family) and I’ll stop here because I have reams of Jordan sibling feels.


	8. Chapter 8

Barry can’t remember the color of his pants. 

He thinks he was wearing jeans, but he can’t tell now. 

He’d run around the desert aimlessly, shrouding himself in dust, until the angry monster in his chest drowned out the calming hiss of the sand. 

After that he’d banked a hard left and headed for the ocean, careening up and down the roaring waves, careful to avoid the places Arthur had politely asked him to stop running over because he was scaring the whales. 

He’d lapped Antarctica twice, then veered off to Patagonia to follow the line of the Andes. He’d lost track of the paths he’d followed or blazed, between cornstalks and sidewalks and cobbles and creeks. 

When he’d finally stopped, dropping to his knees with a howl somewhere in northern Alberta, he realized he’d been crying the entire time. 

His clothes were unrecognizable, stiff and discolored and warped from his speed and everything he’d put in their path.

Idly he thought  _ this is why I wear the suit to run _ before flopping on his back to look at the sky. 

It hadn’t even been three hours, according to his watch, but Barry felt like it had been days. 

He felt strangely empty, like he’d left everything behind without noticing, a car speeding down the road with an open trunk. 

They had, came down the certainty, to talk about it. 

They’d made a mistake. Mistakes. He knew that now. He thought Hal did too.  _ And knowing is half the battle  _ he mumbled with a giggle. 

Then he sat up with a groan. 

Staring at him from the treeline was an ancient hunter, clutching her rifle and blinking owlishly from deep within leathery, wrinkled eye sockets. 

A dun colored gun dog leaned against her leg and whimpered. 

“You alright there son?” she asked after a while, Canadian accent thick and concerned. 

Barry nods, aware that he seems either drunk or high or addled, and probably homeless too. 

“I should get a move on” he says, pointing his thumb vaguely backwards as she blinks at him. 

If she wasn’t so old he’d be afraid he’d end up on /r/LetsNotMeet/ or /r/CryptoBeings/ or something. 

“You’re sure? Don’t need help?” she says, because Canadians are unfailingly polite even when afraid for their safety or sanity, apparently. 

“I’m sure” he says with a weak smile and awkwardly traipsed into the woods in stiff clothes to the sound of her dog’s anxious whines. He thinks about getting a little further away before speeding off but there’s really no way for him to make the encounter less weird.

 

Barry runs to a small cache in southern Ontario where they keep spare clothes and Zeta tube access. He’s running again the second his feet hit the Watchtower’s floor. 

Distantly he can hear the very beginning of the computer’s announcement of his arrival, slow and distorted by his speed. 

Batman’s at the conn, cowl just beginning to tilt towards the noise and Barry can’t face him. 

He’ll make up something to say later, but right now his thoughts are just a rushing current of  _ Halhalhalhalhal _ . 

Barry’s moving to quickly to stop when he realizes he’s made the last turn to get to Hal’s quarters and he’s phasing through the door before he realizes it. 

He’s asleep, curled tightly on his side, face drawn and shadowed. 

There’s no thought to it when he drops onto the bed and lays his hand on Hal’s shoulder. 

Predictably, Hal wakes up suddenly and totally, combat training flaring to life and driving his knee into Barry’s stomach and an elbow into his chest before he’s awake enough to stop. 

“Barry?” he says, voice turned to tempered steel the way it does when they’re in the field. 

“It’s me, it’s me” he mumbles and Hal scrambles off him, horrified. 

Hal apologizes while Barry apologizes, trying to lay non-threateningly still while Hal looks like he’s resisting the urge to vomit, standing unsteadily by the bed. 

Finally, he sighs and asks for a minute, just one minute. 

Something in his voice slides like a knife between Barry’s ribs. 

He moves to the bathroom, turning on the faucet and splashing water in his face. Barry looks away. 

It not like Hal ever closes the door behind him, but this still feels personal in a way Barry can’t define. 

“I may have been a bit of dick” Hal says when he emerges. “Earlier”. 

Barry both nods and shakes his head. “I- I wasn’t fair, either. You’re right, we’d made a deal and I- you don’t owe me anything”. 

It’s not like Barry didn’t know Hal’s habits, his history. He’d picked him because of those things. He wasn’t supposed to bring attachment into it, he can’t ask for things he knocked off the table. Hal sighs. 

“I want us to be good-” “We are!” Barry says, because somehow the thought of them not being okay makes him want to run again. “But you’re not gonna be happy with me”. 

He can feel himself vibrating slightly and forces himself to stop. “And why do you say that?” 

Hal gives him a grim little smile. 

“I might have had ulterior motives, earlier”. 

“Um. I’m pretty sure that was me. It was my idea, the whole...” he waves his hand, trying to encompass everything that they’d done on the same sheets he was sitting on what felt like years ago instead of the same day. 

“Not that. The diner. I was going to tell you…” Barry can actually, perfectly, feel his heart skip a beat and stop. Just for a second. 

“I’m being deployed. Oa recalled me this morning. They’re saying just three months but. I know them”. 

Barry feels like he’s in free fall, his inside falling out. 

“They what? What for?  _ Why? _ ”. 

Hal shrugs. He might know more, he might not care. 

Once, during a heated discussion about the League and its role and their limitations, Batman calling for better reach and Oliver for restraint, asking Hal for back-up, he’d just shrugged. 

_ Unlike you, I do have to answer to somebody _ he’d said. Accountability, oversight, authority, it all means different things to him. It’s easy to forget that Hal’s technically just there for interagency cooperation, from a certain point of view. 

“I wanted it to go smooth. Go out with a bang. Funny, huh?” he says, trying to smile. 

Barry never wants to see that again, that insane, selfless bravery. 

He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to hold Hal, just hold him, for forever if Hal would let him. Barry knows he wouldn’t. 

Instead he makes Hal sit on the bed, not close enough to touch. 

“When are you leaving?” he says. 

“They’re giving me a week and a half to get my shit together” he says, in a tone that implies he’s not going to need it. 

As far as Barry knows, all he’s got on Earth is a P.O. box and a storage unit paid for by a bank account swollen with a stipend he never gets to use. Batman helps him manage it, or rather the best people at Wayne Industries do, for all that they snipe at each other. Brothers in arms after all. 

“Enough time for Oliver to throw a party” he says with a lightness he doesn’t feel. 

Hal snorts. “He says it’s all planned”. 

The last time Oa had sent for Hal the call had come in halfway through a fight with Morrow and Ivo’s new breed of android and he’d left as soon as they’d finished. 

Oliver had bitched about not being able to throw a proper going away bash for weeks, covering up his fear. 

He and Barry had both seen the color drain from Hal’s face when they’d called the emergency in. He'd come back with fading bruises and an unconvicing smile. Hal had never ever talked about it, after. 

“I told him and Dinah after...I was going to tell you first, but. I ran into them in the hallway”. His eyes flick to Barry’s, just for a moment. If he wasn’t a speedster he might have missed it. 

He nods. It’s not like he has a claim there, a right to be upset. 

“I told Batman too. He’s gonna announce it at the next meeting, save me the trouble” Hal says with a shrug.  _ It’s a done deal, no point in worrying over it _ . It’s the way he is. 

“What are you going to tell your brothers?” he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

Hal laughs. “They think I’m already deployed”. 

They’re quiet for a moment, and Barry inches his pinkie towards Hal’s. 

It’s over, then. 

He doesn’t need Hal to say it, shakes his head when he starts to speak.  _ You’re not gonna be happy with me. _ It’s for the best, probably. 

“We’re good” he says. “You’re one of my best friends and nothing’s gonna change that”. 

Hal gives him the first genuine smile since he burst into the room. 

“You’re always gonna be my Care Bear” he says and Barry shoves at his shoulder. It feels good. 

He gets up to go, then pauses at the door. 

“Do- do you want to talk? About it?” 

“No” 

“Is-is that because of what we were doing? Or because you think feelings are for wimps?” 

“Why not both?” Hal says with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and Barry nods, and leaves. 

  
  


They have dinner that night, with Clark and J’onn and they all talk about how they’ll miss him. 

Barry doesn’t go to Hal’s quarters that night, but he plays video games with him and Ray the next day. 

His Snapchat buzzes with pictures from Hal, on Ferris Wheels, eating funnel cake and cotton candy, and texts during from a day at the beach while Hal enjoys what’s left of his freedom. 

It doesn’t feel any different. 

They’re still friends, even if Barry misses the press of his skin.

It’s exactly what he’d hoped for when this started, what he’d hoped for before it started. An uncomplicated friendship, no strings, a helping hand that gracefully retreated when the time came. 

The weirdness will pass. It has to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This is the general accent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYyKwnHTeg) I was thinking of, only y’know, terrified.  
>  Those are real subreddits! I was trying to decide which one fit their encounter better and picked both.  
> This chapter is the second time I’ve mentioned that Hal never closes the bathroom door because that’s a headcanon I could expound about forever. Hit me up if you want to hear it.  
> Hal really does have a P.O. box, and nothing else, [which he mentioned while having a lovely moment with Barry](http://batfamcreys.tumblr.com/post/162490989262/hal-would-construct-a-floating-bar-and-play-the).  
> I have absolutely loved the combination of Morrow and Ivo since they made [Tomorrow Woman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Woman) and broke mine and Superman’s hearts.


	9. Chapter 9

The party’s in full swing when Barry actually shows up.

He’d spent nearly an hour sitting on his bed, psyching himself up, already late.

Even then he’d speed circled the block a few times, burning off nervous energy.

As he had lapped the elegant grey high-rise holding Oliver’s penthouse, he’d noticed a few opportunistic paparazzo that must have been tipped off by the doormen or assorted drivers that Ollie Queen, tabloid fodder extraordinaire, is holding some sort of rager attended by various gorgeous, Olympic bodied revelers. They probably think it’s an orgy.

He steals all the SD cards out of all their cameras before running up the side of the building and vaulting into the hallway that leads to the apartment.

He’d thought about going straight to the balcony but it feels rude, somehow.

Or maybe there’s a selfish part of him that wants to make an entrance, to be noticed. It takes him a few minutes to gather himself enough to ring the doorbell.

Plastic Man answers the door, face blended into an unholy mix of Barda and Billy. Barry can never, to his embarrassment, remember his real name.

“C’mon in, the water’s fiiiiiiiiiiiiine!” he says in Michael Buffer’s voice. From behind him somebody groans.

He steps inside, enjoying the driving beat of whatever’s playing. He has a sneaking suspicion the playlist comes from Speedy, or maybe Dinah just copied it off Mount Justice’s servers. The crowd is the usual disconcerting mix: alien skin tones and extra appendages scattered amongst people in body armor and cowls mingling with people in suits or sweats. It's a strange group and for once in his life, Barry fits right in. He looks around for Dinah and doesn't take long to spot her.

She looks resplendent in a Robin’s egg blue dress, cut just right, hanging off of Hal’s arm while laughing at some story he’s telling. Oliver’s nowhere in sight.

For a minute he just watches them. They’re so beautiful, so perfectly matched. What if Hal had gotten there first? And then some traitorous voice in his head whispers that he doesn’t know that Hal didn’t.

He shakes off the thought like water and goes up to them.

They smile at him, Dinah’s a little brittle, Hal’s wide and real.

Barry can’t be ashamed of himself for squeezing Hal tight and breathing into his neck _I’m gonna miss you_. He’s so warm.

His lips brush the shell of Barry’s ear with a laugh and he just wants to stay there, breathing him in.

But he lets go and steps back and teases him for wearing something other than a bomber jacket, for once.

Dinah takes credit for that and it’s easy to laugh.

The song changes into something slow, _you’re just too good to be true_ , and Hal leads her out onto the dance floor.

They sway for a minute before Oliver swoops in out of nowhere and cuts in.

He hams it up, wrapping his arms around Hal to everyone’s howls and wolf whistles, but after a minute Barry can see how genuine it is, Oliver’s arms strong and Hal’s eyes soft.

They look beautiful together too, a different kind of perfect, and maybe that’s the real tragedy.

He can’t stand it.

He takes Dinah’s hand and they manage to be a passable duo. Then Clark and Diana join them on the floor and they switch partners on the next song.

After a terrifying tour of the dance floor with Diana, not because she’s a bad dancer but because she’s _Diana_ , Barry gratefully bows out.

He wanders around for awhile happy to be able to just hang out, catching up with everyone without it happening on a battlefield surrounded by shattered glass and explosions. It’s nice.

The party strikes the right balance between fun and serious, enough to say goodbye to Hal without sacrificing a good time. Oliver’s always been good at that sort of thing.

 

“Hey” whispers a familiar voice in his ear when Barry’s lost in contemplation of a truly horrible B-movie poster Oliver has proudly displayed in one of the many, many corridors of the penthouse.

He might be a little lost, he admits to Hal, who smiles wide.

“I love that about you-” he says, and he can’t let him finish. It’s the sort of thing he’s always said but it makes a lump catch in Barry’s throat.

“Hal” he starts, stops, tries again. “What if-”

“No”

“You didn’t even-”

“No, Barry, we shouldn’t give it a go. No, Barry, we shouldn’t be in a relationship. _No_ , Barry you’re not in love with me”. His eyes are serious, pleading, large and dark.

“I wasn’t going to…” but he was. “I just. You don’t think that maybe-”

Hal shakes his head.

“Look I wouldn’t force you or make this weird for you or anything but. Why not take the chance? For something real” he can hear himself say, desperate and open.

Hal’s eyes look hard and glittery. His jaw clenches and he lets out a sigh.

“I’m trying to keep you from making a huge mistake _because_ I really care about you. This is just your white knight complex versus my trainwreck existence because I’m the only one you’ve had sex with in ages and it’s blinded you to how terrible I am”.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that” Barry says because it’s all he can say.

“The good thing- Hal presses on even though he sounds like he’s bleeding- is that I’m going and it’ll give you time to realize _holy shit, I can’t believe I tried to start a_ relationship _with Harold Ariel Jordan”_.

They stand in silence for a while.

What can he even say?

“Your name is Harold _Ariel_ Jordan?” he decides, finally, because he can recognize Hal’s deftness at misdirection and he’s taking pity on them both.

“It’s a boy’s name, I swear. Fucking Disney. Here, I’ll show you” he says, sounding relieved and making a big show of finding his wallet.

Barry politely ignores the fact that he’s using the time to compose himself. He needs it too.

Eventually he hands it over, and Barry fingers the edges, staring at the flat photo distorted by the plastic.

Hal doesn’t look half as handsome as he does in person.

His hands come up to cover Barry’s, their foreheads touching. They stay like that for what feels like a long, long time.

“Hold on to that for me” Hal whispers and Barry nods against his temple.

It’s a bargain, a memento, an apology for what he can’t give.

“Sure thing” Barry whispers back and he can feel some of the tension drain from Hal.

They walk back upstairs together, getting drinks and making smalltalk. The movement of people splits them up gradually, and Barry slips the license out of his pocket to stare at it for a minute, tucked in some quiet corner.

The only other thing he learns from it is that Hal’s blood type is B+.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Michael Buffer is famous for [his trademarked catchphrase, "Let's get ready to rumble!”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6eQ78HCGEA). I hope you can picture what I’m picturing because it’s hilarious.  
> Mount Justice is [Young Justice’s HQ](http://youngjustice.wikia.com/wiki/Mount_Justice) and I know Speedy still being Speedy creates a bit of a continuity snag but roll with it, ok?  
> The song Hal and Barry dance to is, of course, [_Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You_ by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcJm1pOswfM).  
>  I have a ton of reasons for wanting Hal’s middle name to be Ariel, but let me just say [it means lion of God and it really is traditionally a man’s name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_\(name\)).  
> A lot of you are currently saying “wait, U.S. driver’s licenses don’t come with blood types!” The thing is they do in my country and [I only found out that wasn’t true for Americans well after writing this scene](http://meduseld.tumblr.com/post/164436201610/meduseld-um-what-the-fuck-usa-why-dont-you) and I liked it too much to change it. So let’s call it artistic license and move on.


	10. Chapter 10

It takes him awhile, and a tour of another dozen other questionable decoration choices, before he really lets himself back into the party. He makes sure to grab two whiskeys for himself when he does.

Barry’s talking to Plastic Man, or rather letting him ramble while frantically trying to remember his real name when he hears the song change.

He makes it back to the dancefloor because somebody, Clark, he suspects, plays the _Time Warp_.

He laughs as he teaches Diana the steps, catching a couple elbows to the ribs, and promises he’ll watch the movie with her when they have the time.

She insists on having the next dance, putting Barry through a series of complicated whirling steps that make him just give up and stand on her feet instead. Diana just laughs and spins them faster and faster. They’re practically touching the ceiling when the music stops.

Clark floats up to cut in, and they both muddle their way through the next song, the Midwest in both of them making them so stiff and awkward that he feels he’s been transported back to a middle school dance. But Clark’s smiling and Barry finds that he’s smiling too.

Then they play something else, slower and pulsing, and there’s a familiar pair of arms around him.

“May I have this waltz, Mr. Allen?”.

He hesitates for less than a millisecond before saying “You certainly can, Mr. Jordan, but I don’t think it’s a _waltz_ ”.

“It’s Captain, technically” he says with a smile.

Barry dances with Hal for as long as the music hangs in the air, trying too hard not to lay his head on his shoulder and just breathe him in for a while.

He moves away too quickly and regrets it, dancing with Barda with only half a mind.

She notices.

Barry gives up on dancing after that, concentrating on the buffet table, suddenly ravenous.

Between the little sausages and the mini sandwiches and myriad of caviar dishes, Barry feels he eats half his own body weight. Even then he debates running out for tacos or hot dogs.

Instead, he lets Speedy sneak him into the kitchen for chocolate chip cookies and ice cream, dodging Dinah as she pulls out more and more trays for the crowd outside. Barry thinks that parties like these usually come with waiters, but it’s not like they could risk it.

He’s pretty sure J’onn was playing a round of _Guess which cartoon I am?_ earlier and that’s not even touching on what Shayera usually gets up to.

She spots them, huddled near the door to the laundry room and good naturedly rolls her eyes. “I should charge you two rent, if you’re gonna spend the night in there” she says, juggling even more salmon blinis on her way back outside.

“You’re not my real mom” Speedy says, half joking half resentful. He’s deep in the trenches of adolescence, annoying and endearing by turns. His voice has cracked half a dozen times and he keeps scratching at a pimple blooming on his nose.

He’s a textbook perfect sullen teenager, but underneath Barry can sense the courage of a good man and the anxiety of a young boy daunted by the idea of losing his favorite uncle. He’s surprised by how mature he seems, and how eager to prove himself. He’s not sure how long he’ll stay where he is, but it’s not his place to say it.

Eventually things start to wind down and Barry finds himself alone on the second largest balcony, staring at the stars.

They seem cold.

Behind him, the door slides open, a quick blast of warmth and sound before it clicks shut, and he’s smiling as he turns.

It dies on his face.

It’s just Oliver, brushing some stray confetti off his shoulder, balancing a glass of whiskey in his other hand. His suit jacket is _burgundy_.

“Thought I’d find you here” he says, not looking at Barry. He frowns and looks away.

Oliver sighs.

“I knew it was a bad idea” he says.

“The party’s fine, I just needed some air” Barry says, confused.

Oliver looks him in the eye. “I told him it was a bad idea, doing that with you”.

He can feel cold steel wrapping around his ribs, sucking in a breath that’s too shallow. His voice is too loud when he says “He _told_ y-”

“You know he didn’t tell me about you anymore than he told you about me. We both know that’s not his style” Oliver says, voice flat.

“But I could tell, okay? I mean, you were walking out of his room with a swing in your step and those pretty lips all swollen because I guess even your healing factor doesn’t work that fast”. He sounds almost angry. 

Barry feels like his chest has been gored open. He feels like his insides are hanging out, like a he’s just a silly, obvious _boy_. Had they really been so transparent?

Oliver keeps going, voice like steel.

“I told him wouldn't be a good idea with you, that you wouldn't be able to keep it separate”.

“Oh and you’re so much better?!” Barry says, all wounded anger.

“No” Oliver says after a moment, running a hand through his hair. He looks regretful.

“Look, I'm only going to say this once, and if anybody asks I won’t admit to it but. The thing is, you _care_. So much. It’s not that the rest of us don't. But the way that you do it, it, it’s basically just you and Clark. You’re too _good_ , Barry. It was never going to work”.

Barry’s fists clench. And his eyes water. He looks away. Oliver’s just trying to help, in his stunted Oliver way and Barry wants him to go away. He can’t seem to make himself move, even though he wants to.   

“You just need to move on” he says and Barry huffs out an ugly laugh. “Do other things. Other people”.

“Don’t make me punch you, Oliver” he says, and hates that he sounds closer to tears than violence. He wipes at his nose, his eyes.

The thought slips into his mind and he can’t stop himself, wants to land a blow of his own.

“Maybe I will. You and Dinah are in an open relationship, I’m guessing. She’s free to make her own choice, right?”.

Oliver doesn’t take the bait. He gives Barry something like a smile.

“I’m going regret telling you this, but yes”.

Barry wants to hate him. He really does. But something in him just can't.

He turns away instead and hears Oliver slip back inside, the door sliding nearly silently shut. 

When he finally goes back inside, hands cold from the wind and heart still erratic in his chest. he finds Hal’s already left. On a side table he finds and drains an entire glass of vodka he realizes too late he’s stolen from Batman.

It’s worse when he doesn’t even seem angry behind the cowl, just a little sad.

Barry mumbles an apology and leaves without saying goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plastic Man’s name is [Patrick “Eel” O’Brian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_Man) and Barry’s difficulty with his name is an esoteric reference to his close comics friendship with [Elongated Man, aka Ralph Dibny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elongated_Man). Also I thought it was funny.  
> You know the [_Time Warp_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkplPbd2f60).  
>  J’onn doing different cartoon characters is a reference [to this wonderful scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiufxvabEeY&feature=youtu.be&t=1m51s) from _The New Frontier_.  
>  You know Oliver would wear a burgundy suit jacket. He looks [something like this](https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB12ClhJXXXXXbUXpXXq6xXFXXXJ.jpg).


	11. Epilogue

Barry’s cleaning up after Captain Cold because of course he chooses December to be more active, as if the thick blanket of Midwestern snow and the chaos of holiday shopping wasn’t enough to deal with.

He’s hunched over a park bench after cleaning up the mess Cold left before being shoved into the back of a Central City Police Department van trying to catch his breath because even with his speed the icy air makes his lungs ache. 

The League comm in his ear chirps, with the three note tone that signals that it’s just a general announcement, not an urgent call. 

He winces a little when Oliver’s voice comes through like a foghorn. 

They haven’t spoken much since the party, it would have been too weird. But they’re okay, for the most part. 

Then what he’s saying registers. 

Hal’s coming back. 

His trip had stretched out into something like five months and a half, though technically he’d been on Earth for those three days that they’d spent dealing with that Macrolatt invasion attempt. 

Barry hadn’t seen him though, stuck on the ground while Hal worked with Clark in the skies. 

Still, they’ve been speaking. 

Just the usual amount, a few calls and the equivalent of emails, some texting. 

In the time since he’s been gone, Barry’s slept with three people. 

In the end, the thing with Dinah did happen, mostly because she was curious about the vibration and when they’d finished both of them agreed that it was best to cherish the memories but leave them in the past and move on as if it hadn’t happened. 

They’ve been successful, mostly.

The other had happened during Iris’ birthday celebration in some downtown nightclub, with a name Barry could never remember. 

Sometime between pretending to enjoy Jell-O shots and failing at dancing he’d ended up meeting a very nice young woman that had decided to take him home.

It had been nice, but nothing spectacular. Mostly he’d been happy to see that he could pass as somebody completely ordinary and he hoped she hadn’t had too bad of a time. 

She hadn’t quite rushed him out the door in the morning, but she hadn’t called the number he’d left her, either. 

And the last one had been, no joke, Dean Daphne, his old one time lab partner that he’d spent a semester and a half blowing, after he’d run into him, no joke, in line at Jitters and thought   _ well, why not? _

Funny, wasn’t it, how the clear the line between having sex and making love became. 

Underneath the sodium streetlamps, Barry takes one last, icy, heaving, breath and runs home. 

Hal’s going to be at the party tonight, and he’s not entirely sure how he feels about it. 

It doesn’t stop him from spending an hour and fifty-two minutes agonizing over what to wear, bothering Joe with endless texts about possible outfits, even though it was the sort of event where people could and had worn sweatpants without raising eyebrows. 

Officially it was called the Non-Denominational Northern Hemisphere Winter Holiday Celebration but everybody except Batman just called it the Not-Christmas Party. 

It had a little something for everyone, and enough party games and doctored eggnog to make it way more bearable than most office festivities. 

Last year someone had had the bright idea of playing  _ Baby It’s Cold Outside _ and Diana had actually hurled the speakers directly into Clark’s chest, smashing them to bits. From his laughter, and the fact that he hadn’t ducked out of the way, he hadn’t minded. Or he’d been gifted with one of Hal’s special alien alcohol juice boxes. Maybe both. 

It makes him think of Hal’s license, burning a hole in his bedside drawer. 

He’d carried it around for the first week, feeling stupid, like a schoolgirl with a crush, but then he’d dip his hand in his pocket, running his fingers along the hard plastic edges and something in his throat would settle. 

Eventually it had migrated to his bedside, Hal’s face smiling at him in the dark. 

After Dinah, he’d put it in the drawer. He doesn’t think about it, mostly. 

Just whenever Clark comes over to play videogames and Barry abruptly remembers his x-ray vision.

Sometime after Hal had left the planet, Barry had helped Clark fight off a contingent of LexCorp bots rampaging down the streets of Metropolis, which according to official company spokespeople had just been a regrettable programming error. 

When they’d finished, huffing and covered in oil and coolant, Clark had offered to buy him lunch for his trouble. 

As they sat in the hard plastic chairs of the Big Belly Burger on Kanigher Street, Clark earnestly telling him a story from work while blowing back an errant curl that kept flopping into his eyes, Barry was struck by how attractive he was. 

He thought about how easy it would be to say something, nothing too elaborate or sleazy, just a quick question while pressing their knees together under the table. 

It wouldn’t be like what he’d thought, what he’d wanted when the thought had first popped into his head ages ago, the enormity of what he would have been asking. 

It would have been a straight up proposition, nothing monumental, something that he couldn’t believe had seemed so impossible. 

But he hadn’t. 

He’d smiled at Clark’s stories, laughing and grimacing in all the right places, enjoying himself. 

When he’d turned to leave, Clark had laid a hand on his shoulder and said “I’m glad to see you smiling again”. 

He hadn’t know what to say to that. 

Batman had made a similar comment, slightly more pointedly. Everyone else probably just assumed he was adjusting to Hal’s absence, and they were mostly right. 

But he’d gotten back on even keel: videogames with J’onn, races with Arthur and even occasional drinks with Dinah and Oliver, careful not to be alone with either of them. 

He’s thinking about all of them, his incredible and improbable friends when he speeds to the nearest Zeta tube to head to the Watchtower. 

When he gets there, almost embarrassingly early, Hal’s already there. 

He’s wearing one of his oldest, grungiest flight jackets, the one that’s turned some color between grey and brown, and his left eye looks like it’s almost done recovering from having swollen shut recently. He needs a shave and a haircut and he’s still one of the most breath stoppingly beautiful people Barry’s ever seen. 

It takes him a minute to walk up to him, partly because he needs to remember how his lungs work and partly because everyone else wants to say hi. 

When Barry hugs him, he feels the same, solid and warm. 

He smiles at Barry the way he always has. 

“I still have your license” he mumbles. Hal cackles, delighted. It’s so familiar it aches. 

“Keep it. It’s probably expired anyway”. 

“You’ve got like a week left” he says and feels his entire face flush. He can’t believe he said it. What else it says. 

Hal’s eyes widen for a beat and then he smiles, fond. 

“What would I do without you?”

 

An hour and a half later Barry drifts back to the little corner Hal’s commandeered for himself, slightly unsteady on his feet, like whatever slammed into his face left his legs a little weak too. 

It’s something that takes a while, or maybe just a knowledge of Hal’s body, or Hal himself to notice. Unless you’re Batman, probably. 

He’s sitting down, arm half around Dinah, laughing along to some story Oliver’s telling, punctuating his words with little taps to Hal’s knee that make Barry’s teeth ache. 

But he still joins them, slipping between Hal and Oliver like he hasn’t noticed he’s done it. 

It’s so normal it’s bizarre. There’s no awkwardness, no fumbled words. He looks at their smiles faces and thinks  _ well maybe I’ll get there, that point where this being so normal doesn’t feel like it should be abnormal.  _

Fifty-two minutes later he turns around to look and realizes that Hal’s gone. He scans the room, but all he sees are slow dancing couples and Batman’s pained expression as both Diana and Arthur try to coax him out onto the dance floor. 

He hasn’t left though, something inside Barry is pretty sure. 

He’s just gotten overloaded, all the people and the noise and the movement, after months of the still silence of space. 

Once, at the diner, he’d told Barry that it was almost like being in a warzone again, mind sharp during weeks and weeks of boredom then a few minutes of pure adrenaline. 

_ Patience and vigilance _ he’d said, like he was quoting someone else, grinning like it hurt. 

Just like that Barry knows exactly where to find him.

 

The southwest observation deck has a weird curve to it, accommodating a support pylon that hadn't been in the original plans but soon proved to be necessary with the amount of super strong people throwing each other around in the sparring ring on the floor directly above it. 

Behind the twists of metal, out of sight, Hal’s leaning on the railing, hands dangling in front of him. He’s staring at the stars. 

“Mr. Allen- he says without turning- fancy meeting you here”. 

Barry freezes for a second before sighing,  _ is he that predictable? _ , and joining him. 

He starts and rejects about six different sentences. Hal’s eyes track constellations. 

“How have you been?” he says finally, staring at the back of his hands. 

In the corner of his vision, Hal smiles. “Y’know. The usual. What about you? Been rocking any vans lately?”

“A few, actually” he says, feeling his cheeks heat up. Hal grins; “Nice! I knew you had it in you, Bear”.

Barry works up the courage to look at him and finds that Hal really does seem happy for him, eyes soft and fond. 

Barry presses his shoulder against Hal’s. They jostle each other like horses, rough but affectionate. Something in his chest settles, something he hadn’t noticed had quite fit right, a seal that’s taken this long to close.

They talk about everything and nothing. 

Hal lists off all the meals he can’t wait to eat and the fact that his surfboard is calling his name. Figuring out how to put off seeing his brothers.

Barry tells him about new lab partners, always shifting because most people find it too bizarre at the CCPD crime lab, and the latest memes about the Justice League. It’s easy. After a while they run out of they run out of things to say but it isn’t awkward. 

There’s just a silence, the good kind, the type that comes with watching snow fall outside when you’re dry and warm. He feels something like peace. 

Barry reaches out and puts his hand over Hal’s, lacing their fingers together.

He squeezes.

Hal squeezes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Macrolatt are [an actual, hostile, DC alien species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alien_races_in_DC_Comics).  
> I did a ridiculous amount of research on US street lamps to find if sodium was accurate. It [appears](http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/researchAreas/pdf/GrotonFinalReport.pdf%20) to [be](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4i2b3p/why_do_we_use_sodium_for_street_lighting/).  
> The Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Party was a common thing in the SGA fandom, which I used to hang out in. I have no idea where it originated.  
> Why yes, that’s a reference to the now ubiquitous [_Baby It’s Cold Outside_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFJ7ie_yGU) discourse.  
> [Big Belly Burger is a DCU staple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Belly_Burger) and the street is a reference to [Robert Kanigher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kanigher), creator of the Barry Allen version of the Flash.  
> [“The memes in the dc universe are probably unreal tbh”](http://ohmygil.tumblr.com/post/164023524322), natch.  
>  If you made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you had as much fun as I did.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for "Lover, Are you Lonely?"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12619728) by [paleogymnast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paleogymnast/pseuds/paleogymnast)




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